Political commentary and analysis from conservative pundit, John LeBoutillier, the former U.S. Congressman and author of Harvard Hates America.

The situation in Iraq - and the American domestic political equation - are in a state of total free-fall.

First, Iraq:

As was predicted here almost four years ago, the Iran-backed Shia Muslims, who are the majority in Iraq, are steadily taking over Iraq and turning it into an ally of Tehran - a most ominous development for the United States.

Iran is truly one of the charter members of the Axis of Evil - and, ironically, the Bush Plan is turning Iraq into an adjunct of Iran!

Under the new Constitution of Iraq, these fundamentalist Muslims will be able to control the oil in the south and also impose their radical political and social agenda. Women will be treated worse under this new government than under Saddam. Beatings and stonings will be allowed; and women will be confined to a backward lifestyle including limited education and no outside-the-house jobs.

Did US troops fight and die so that a Muslim Theocracy could be imposed in Iraq?

Our whole adventure in Iraq is an example of American intervention run amok. It is why true conservatives never liked the notion of a pre-emptive invasion and we don’t believe in “nation-building.”

We have ended up having the President of the United States calling Abdul Aziz Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and asking him to undo a previous Bush de-Baathification Plan that Bush himself ordered 3 years ago!!! And Hakim is so pro-Tehran that he actually fought on the side of Iran against Iraq in the 1980's!

Iraq is a mess - and no fancy-pants words from Washington are going to change that reality. We have - through the ignorance of a naive and arrogant President with no foreign policy background or understanding - unleashed a monster in Iraq: fundamentalist Islam.

Ironically, it is this strain of Islam that attacked us on 9/11. And we have now helped it advance through the Middle East by handing it another nation - Iraq - in which to establish itself.

Now, here at home:

GW Bush’s presidency has been reduced to a shell of what it was eight months ago.

Just months after his second term began, Mr. Bush has self-destructed. His two major initiatives - Iraq and Social Security Reform - are both total flops. And he has the lowest poll ratings of any president since WWII with the exception of Richard Nixon during Watergate.

How could this happen?

Simple, really: As Iraq festers and our troops die, the economy here at home has soured people. The constantly increasing price of oil and gas steadily digs into people’s savings.

GW Bush is down, according to both Gallup and Harris surveys, to a positive rating of 40%. That is basically the base Republican vote. In other words, he has frittered away all other support from Independents and Democrats.

As a former North Carolina Congressman predicted last week, “Bush is one Lebanon-style barracks bombing away from a total political meltdown.”

And the Democrats are no more popular these days. Polling shows the public equally unhappy with that party.

Indeed, the political situation in Iraq and in the United States is one of steady deterioration.

And, in almost all cases, these events are working against American interests:

1) The rise of Iran as a more powerful and aggressive player on the world stage: The election of the new Iranian President - a hardliner who was one of the ringleaders of the radical ‘students’ who seized our embassy on November 4, 1979 and held our hostages for 444 days - again signals that Iran is our Number One enemy in the Middle East.

With our removal of Saddam from power in Iran’s long-time arch enemy, Iraq, the Iranians are quietly and cleverly moving into Iraqi vacuum on a number of levels. They have infiltrated the new Iraqi government and bureaucracy; and they have supplied the insurgency with the most sophisticated new bomb-making equipment.

The Iraqi Prime Minister lived in Tehran for ten years. His ‘boss’ and spiritual leader, Ayatollah Sistani - the most powerful man in Iraq - is not even an Iraqi. He is in fact an Iranian who grew up with Ayatollah Khomeini.

Make no mistake of it: Iran’s influence in Iraq is not a good thing - and should have been foreseen before our invasion.

2) Iraq devolves into a Muslim Theocracy: the failure this week to draw up a constitution in part is due to the Shiite Muslims’ desire to have the Islamic (religious) law - the Sharia - be codified into the law of Iraq.

This would make Iraq - the country that almost 1900 US soldiers have died to free from Saddam’s repression - a clone of Iran. Women would be treated as second-class citizens. Beatings and stonings would become common - and women will have no recourse.

Plus, the Shiites want an ‘autonomous’ region in the south of Iraq in which to implement their own radical views.

What kind of country will the ‘new’ Iraq become if it is comprised of 2 or 3 ‘autonomous’ regions with their own laws and religious edicts? Will the national government have sovereignty - or will we have actually helped Iraq become 3 separate countries?

3) Gaza pullout: the key question here is simple: will the Palestinians seize this unilateral ‘gift’ from Israel and work to create a truly successful nation of their own - or will they turn it into an armed camp from which to wage more war against Israel?

We do not know the answer yet.

Gaza will now allow the Palestinians to build their own seaport through which they could import tons of weapons (from Iran).

The jury is still out on whether Prime Minister Abbas will be able to take control - or allow the Hamas terrorists to seize the day.

4) The constantly rising cost of gasoline: this is eroding the political support of President Bush and the Congress and eating away at the economic of the average American family.

No wonder the people think the nation is headed on the ‘wrong track.’

And yet the government seemingly does nothing to address this problem.

No wonder Bush’s ratings are the lowest of his presidency: when the day-to-day financial situation of people suffers, they blame those in power.

And there is no end in sight: rising world demand for oil makes it likely the price will only steadily rise in the future:

Conclusion: We need to face a grim reality: the Middle East is a mess - has always been a mess - and will likely remain a mess for the impending future.

We are barking up the wrong tree if we think we can impose western values and democratic freedoms on a people who don’t want them, don’t believe in them and won’t fight for them.

Plus, we are crazy to bank our economic security on such a volatile region of the world.

We must - and this should be our top national priority - begin immediately to mass-produce first hybrid cars and then segue into hydrogen fuel cells.

We can not base our national economic security on unstable governments and irrational people.

1) Today’s death of ABC’s Peter Jennings finalizes a revolution in the So-Called Mainstream Media’s Evening News line-up. One year ago, all three networks were dominated by their long-time news anchors: Jennings at ABC, Tom Brokaw at NBC and the dean, Dan Rather, at CBS. While Brokaw had already announced his retirement, the de facto firing of Dan Rather over his biased report on GW Bush’s National Guard service ended Rather’s reign at CBS; no successor has yet been named as CBS News struggles to find a new format for their delivery of news.

Network news anchors have become dinosaurs.

They are a thing of the past.

The idea that we need one man to give us the news has been contradicted by the rise of the Internet, talk radio and the Fox News Channel.

Quite simply, the American people don’t need to wait until 6:30 PM to get their dose of news; they can and do get it all during the day through a number of sources.

Rather, Brokaw and Jennings were all hopelessly liberal; they all were always arrogant pontificators who made millions of dollars per year manipulating the news, keeping stories off the air that they didn’t want us to hear and - ultimately - driving down their own ratings through their monopoly of the news.

The market - the viewers, readers and listeners - have all turned to other sources of news. And the Big Three’s ratings continue to dive every month.

The news business will never be the same again. Diversity - the liberals’ favorite concept - has overtaken their own business! And they can’t stand it!

Too bad.

2) Iraq: General John Abizaid recently told a reporter off the record that we can not win in Iraq by militarily defeating the Insurgency; the best we can do is to keep things at a standstill until the Iraqi political situation settles down.

That is not what the General, the head of Centcomm, has told the Congress or the American people. In rosy testimony aimed at keeping up public support for the war, these military leaders follow the Vietnam War model: tell the public all is going well and tell the President what he wants to hear.

This, of course, is a prescription for disaster.

Military leaders who brown-nose the politicians - instead of telling the cold hard truth no matter how unattractive it may be - are a disgrace to their uniform.

The plain facts of the Iraq venture are becoming clearer by the minute: the fundamentalist Muslims, with whom we are at war and have been since November 4, 1979 when they overran our Embassy in Iran and seized the hostages, are taking over the government in Iraq and are under the thumb of Tehran. In fact, the new Iraqi draft Constitution reduces women’s rights and mandates that the Sharia, the Islamic Law, become the law of the land.

So our entire Iraq adventure may end up resulting in the removal of Saddam (a decidedly good thing) and the imposition of a Fundamentalist Islam state in alliance with our arch enemies and charter member of the Axis of Evil, Iran (a very, very bad thing).

3) This is why the Bush administration is now leaking out reports of possible future troop withdrawals from Iraq. Ten days ago we were told we might see 60,000 troops withdrawn next spring or summer.

Then, this past week, we were ‘told’ they might remove 30,000 by next spring.

These leaks are because of GW Bush’s awful poll ratings: 50% of the American people think he is “not honest or trustworthy” and 56% think he is “cocky and arrogant.” Only 42% think he is doing a good job; and on Iraq only 38% approve of his performance.

With all his domestic plans stalled in the Congress, the President’s entire legacy has been reduced to one thing: what happens in Iraq. If it becomes a flourishing democracy, then all will be judged a success.

But if it descends into an annex of the Iranian Ayatollahs, then GW Bush will be judged as one of the biggest flops in American history.

He will have taken a golden opportunity after 9/11 - a moment to unite the world for positive change - and squandered it.

While the jury is still out, the trend line is all downward over there.

Even our imminent energy problems may very well be solved through associated technologies that come from the space program. My fave - hydrogen fuel cell cars - have been greatly advanced by NASA’s fuel cells aboard our manned spacecraft.

Now, of more immediate concern, the next great ‘battlefield’ which we must command is space. We cannot cede space to our potential enemies, especially the Red Chinese.

The Bush Administration has already dangerously cut back on new naval spending in order to finance the Iraq campaign to the tune of $300 billion. Still, the US Navy is by far the world’s best.

So, too, is our Air Force. Just look at the superb job our Air Force did in both wars in Iraq and the late 2001 campaign in Afghanistan.

Why such success?

Because the American taxpayer - and voter - was willing in the 1980's and 1990's to rebuild our decaying and under-financed military in the wake of the post-Vietnam cut-backs.

Ronald Reagan led the way on this much-needed rebuilding - and America followed.

Today we stand as the lone military super power in the world. But Red China is spending money to catch up. And if we sit on our laurels, over time they will catch up to us.

The Chinese are not to be underestimated: their economy is booming; their international espionage program and industrial thievery are the best in the world; and their military leadership evidences the maniacal attitude of other military dictatorships.

The recent public statement from a retired Red Chinese general that they will nuke the USA if America defends Taiwan is but the tip of the iceberg; clearly Beijing is prepping a Taiwan takeover. They just want to be certain we can’t and won’t engage them militarily.

The Bush obsession with Iraq has given our other enemies new openings. With so many of our military resources diverted by Iraq - and with our enlistments way down - the trend is worrisome.

And the Chinese are soon to launch their owned manned space program. You can bet its ultimate goal is to militarize space.

The USA must not and cannot allow them or any other country to get ahead of us in space - period.

Thus these shuttle problems in the big scheme of things are a mere pothole in a huge superhighway. In time, we need a new spacecraft to follow the shuttle, which is now 25 years old.

The problem is politically it is hard to ask the voter for billions in new spending for NASA when spaceflight has seemingly become so routine and no longer exciting.

And we can’t go to the American people with a “we must militarize space” pitch because that is not our goal. But we do want to be so far ahead in space technology, experience and know-how that no one could ever catch up.

It’s called leadership. Our government needs to sell new space spending to the American people. Reagan could do it; Bush is not a good enough salesman to pull it off.

John LeBoutillier is a former U.S. congressman and a nationally recognized political commentator. LeBoutillier has been a prolific writer and he has contributed to many major newspapers and magazines. In 1980, LeBoutillier was elected to represent New York's 6th District becoming the youngest member of the 97th Congress. He also has been a frequent commentator, host and guest of many media programs. more about John...email John